Small-scale fisheries catches in Socotra, an archipelago that belongs to Yemen and is located off the north-eastern tip of Africa in the western Indian Ocean, reached an all-time high of 12,000 tonnes in 2000, declined to about 3,300 tonnes by 2014 and then slightly increased to 3,700 tonnes by 2019.
Sardines at the Rameswaram fishing port in India. Image by Rudolph A. Furtado, Wikimedia Commons
Indian Ocean marine fisheries catches have been consistently rising since the 1950s, a recent study by researchers with the Sea Around Us – Indian Ocean initiative at the University of Western Australia shows. This contrasts with global trends.
Daniel Pauly presenting before the European Parliament, January 24, 2023. Photo by Anton Kuech, Twitter
The Sea Around Us Principal Investigator, Dr. Daniel Pauly, and Project Manager, Dr. Maria ‘Deng’ Palomares, participated in a session of the European Parliament’s Committee on Fisheries on January 24, 2023, to answer questions related to the report Role and impact of China on world fisheries and aquaculture.
A simple fish stock assessment model applied to over 500 years of catch data demonstrated that if Canadian authorities had allowed for the rebuilding of the stock of northern Atlantic cod off Newfoundland and Labrador in the 1980s, annual catches of about 200,000 tonnes could have been sustained.
Traditional fishing pirogue in Madagascar. Photo by Jonathan Talbot, World Resources Institute, Flickr
Substantial growth in the number of motorized vessels operating in the Mozambique Channel region between East Africa and Madagascar in the past 65 years has led to a 60-fold increase in effective small-scale fishing effort and a 91 per cent decline in Catch Per Unit of Effort (CPUE).